July 28 Tuesday – In Redding, Conn. Sam wrote to daughter Jean at Eastern Point in Gloucester, Mass.  

Dear Jean it is a luxuriously lazy & delightful day; & the sun, & the shade, & the far-spreading green & the sumptuous dense foliage, & the soft blue distances, & the gossiping birds make me stay out doors. With myself for company. Miss Lyon has gone to New York & all of the servants have gone to the woods to gather decorations for the rooms—they do it every morning, of their own accord. Claude [Benchotte] has a rare gift for arranging flowers—I guess he is aunt Sue’s equal in this regard.

Yesterday we arranged a dining-table for the birds. It is a shallow cigar box on the end of a stick. The stick projects from Clara’s out-door sleeping cage, three feet below one of her windows. Tammany can’t get at it, but I reckon she will enjoy wishing she could. [sketch of cat jumping below cigar box to the left of this paragraph]

I am very glad you enjoy sailing. Sixty years ago I think I ranked it above all other pleasures, & enjoyed it above all other pastimes. But I am more different now. I found out, in Bermuda, that my passion for it was gone. Partly, maybe, because I could indulge in it if I wanted to. It was forbidden when I was a boy.

I am doing very very very very little work. I am sorry, but I can’t help it—without an effort, & I have ceased from having a liking for efforts. I seem to greatly prefer cards, & billiards, & reading, & smoking, & lying around in the shade. However, I worked 60 years, & if I am ever going to take a holiday it is time I was at it.

Go on with your boating, dear Jean, & have the very best times you can! The pursuit of happiness is the most precious of the liberties granted by the Declaration.

With lots of love & kisses— / Father [MTP].

Isabel Lyon’s journal:  “I went to town and to the P.E. vaults with Benares [Ashcroft]” [MTP: IVL TS 55].

Wallis D. Walker, M.D. wrote from Portsmouth, N.H., thanking Sam for successfully launching the Aldrich Memorial and including a “small check” [MTP]. Note: IVL: “Mr. Clemens couldn’t allow that”